Akin Adesina, AGRA president to speak at Sahel’s 10th anniversary conference

Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank (AfDB); Agnes Kalibala, the president of Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA); will be speaking at a conference to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Sahel Group.

The duo will be joined by two other keynote speakers — Rajiv Shah, president of The Rockefeller Foundation, and Lawrence Haddad, executive director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) — and more than 20 panelists within the investment and agribusiness space across the world.

Kalibala and Shah will be giving insight on “creating an enabling ecosystem for Africa to nourish the world”. Haddad, on the other hand, will be speaking on “food entrepreneurs in Africa: scaling resilient agriculture businesses”.

The conference, themed “Zero Hunger: Africa’s Private Sector Driving Innovation and Growth” is open to key stakeholders in the industry, interested in achieving food security, improved nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture on the continent.

Stakeholders are invited to register here for free to attend the conference slated for  November 24, 2020.

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— Sahel Consulting (@sahelconsulting) November 13, 2020

The Sahel Group consists of Sahel Consulting Agriculture and Nutrition Limited (“Sahel Consulting”), Sahel Capital Agribusiness Managers Limited (“Sahel Capital”), and Nourishing Africa.

“These companies are led by qualified individuals who have garnered decades of expertise working in national and international markets and value chains, with a common passion to transform Africa’s agriculture and nutrition landscape and to create strong agricultural sector-led economic growth within the region,” Sahel said via a press statement.

“Sahel Consulting is transforming Africa’s agriculture and nutrition landscape through tailored, innovative, and market-based research, strategic advisory services, training, and project implementation.

“Sahel Consulting has partnered with government agencies, private sector companies, research institutes, and leading international development organizations over the last 10 years.”

Some of the organisations include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Oxfam International, Technoserve, GAIN, Synergos, DSM, IFDC, ECOWAS, USAID, DFID, Mastercard Foundation and Syngenta.

The Sahel Consulting team is said to have “designed and executed projects focused on agriculture and nutrition policy, strategy, value chain analysis, organizational design, ecosystem solutions, and growth”.

The company has worked in Benin Republic, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Togo, implementing several multi-year programmes in partnership with other organizations including the Building an Economically Sustainable and Integrated Cassava Seed System in Nigeria (BASICS), Nigerian Dairy Development Program (NDDP), Yam Improvement for Income, and Food Security in West Africa (YIIFSWA), and Advancing Local Dairy Development in Nigeria (ALDDN).

Sahel Capital is a leading private equity firm focused exclusively on the food and agricultural sector, and is the fund manager for the Fund for Agricultural Finance in Nigeria (“FAFIN”) – an agribusiness fund with $65.9 million in capital from a range of development finance and institutional investors.

FAFIN has invested in a range of agribusiness companies in Nigeria including Coscharis Farms, Crest Agro, Dayntee Farms, Polyfilm Packaging, Ladgroup, and L&Z Integrated Farms.

Nourishing Africa, a subsidiary of Sahel Consulting is a one-stop hub for African agri-food entrepreneurs, providing critical links to funding, technology and innovation in the sector, training and learning tools, data, events, talent match-making, and other resources to enable them to establish and grow sustainable and profitable businesses.

Its mission is to “drive the profitable and sustainable growth of the African agriculture and food landscapes by attracting, empowering, equipping, connecting and celebrating over 1 million dynamic and innovative young African agri-food entrepreneurs”.

Panelists at the conference, who are local and international entrepreneurs and thought leaders, will be speaking on a range of topics including “Agriculture Development and Economic Transformation from a Global Eye View; Leveraging Technology and Innovation to Leapfrog; The Impact of Big Data on The Food Ecosystem; Africa’s Rebirth: The Role of Agriculture in Economic Transformation; Women in Agriculture and Building Ecosystems of Support For Africa’s SMEs”.

More about the conference can be found here.